Amin Dawuda

Amin is an experienced executive operating at board level in the private and public sectors.

He has held a number of senior leadership roles in financial services organisations, with over 20 years at London Stock Exchange Group.

This included guiding customer facing technology and operations teams, managing risk, compliance and change management in highly regulated capital markets. He also chaired a steering committee that oversaw the performance of LSE Plc’s technology supplier, reporting to the Board and industry regulator.

Amin is vice chair of governors at a primary school, and vice secretary at a youth football club that serve his local community. He is committed to providing development pathways for young people and improving diversity and inclusion, particularly at senior levels within the workforce.

Bill Matthews

Lay member of Regulatory Board and lay member of Appointments Board.

Bill is a Chartered Engineer who began his career as a Test Engineer with Motorola in Scotland, before a number of years running technology businesses. He subsequently developed a portfolio of non-executive interests in a variety of areas, including seven years as Chair of the BBC Pension Fund.

Bill’s current roles include chairmanship of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission and sitting as a lay panellist for the Nursing and Midwifery Council on fitness to practice hearings. He is a member of the British Transport Police Authority and sits on the board of the Scottish Futures Trust – an infrastructure centre of excellence owned by the Scottish Government. Bill holds an MBA alongside first degrees in Electrical Engineering, Psychology, and Humanities with Creative Writing.

Carol-Ann Boothe

Elected to Council: 2019

Carol-Ann Boothe is a director in the Risk Management – Independence Group, with over 25 years’ experience in financial-related audits, attestation services and advisory services to federal government, financial services and commercial clients.

Carol-Ann assists public entities on initial public offerings and approving new services in accordance with international and USA legislation. Previously, Carol-Ann worked in KPMG’s audit and advisory practices in Jamaica, UK, Romania, Croatia, India and USA with clients in various industries.

Carol-Ann chaired ACCA USA Members Network for 2017–19; member of International Assembly 2015-18; vice chair of the ACCA USA Members Network 2015–17, ACCA Washington DC Chapter head from 2013.  Carol-Ann served as treasurer and president of the ACCA Women’s Society South East Division in London from 1997-2000.

Read our interview with Carol-Ann.

Chiew Yin Jones

Chiew Yin is a barrister with over 25 years' experience in criminal justice and is an experienced advocate with a substantial casework and litigation background.

She also sits as a Legally Qualified Chair for the Police Misconduct Panel in London and the South East region and is Vice President of the National Association of Legally Qualified Chairs.

She is a former trustee of the Cleft Lip and Palate Association and enjoys gardening, cooking and reading.

Dani (Ladan) Saghafi

Elected to Council: 2021

Dani is associate professor in audit and corporate finance at Brunel University London’s Business School.

She is also a partner and head of transactions at Frontier Partners, which advises businesses of all sizes on M&A transactions.

Dani has 20 years of experience working with multinationals including Renault, Kone and Hutchinson, leading investigatory work advising on cross-border transactions.

Dani started her career in 2002 in audit, joining Deloitte Corporate Finance in 2006. She qualified with ACCA in 2007.

Dani also has an MBA from Derby University and a Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice.

Dani has worked in nine countries across Europe and the Middle East.

Read our interview with Dani.

Den Surfraz

Elected to Council: 2020

Den is head of compliance at Butterfield Mauritius Limited.

He is a certified fraud examiner with more than 30 years’ experience in financial crime investigation, risk management and compliance. 

His previous position was with Citco in global operation control. He has also worked as an investigator at the Financial Intelligence Unit and as a police officer mainly with the Anti Drugs and Smuggling Unit in Mauritius. 

Den chairs the ACCA Mauritius Network Panel. He is also a board member of Mauritius Institute of Professional Accountants (MIPA) and the Financial Reporting Council (FRC).

He is married with two children and enjoys playing football, watching English football especially Manchester United and trail running.

Read our interview with Den

Elaine Darby

Lay member of Qualifications Board and Chief Examiner.

Elaine is a Chartered Accountant, Senior Lecturer in Accounting, and Director of Undergraduate Education for the School of Business & Management at Royal Holloway University of London. She is also a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

After leaving professional practice in 2008, Elaine became a Tutor with BPP Professional Education before embarking on a career in academia, initially with Henley Business School at the University of Reading, where she was Programme Area Director for Accounting, and later at Royal Holloway.

In her current role, Elaine has responsibility for the academic quality of the undergraduate degree programmes offered by the School of Business & Management and contributes to the education strategy of Royal Holloway.

In the last 10 years, Elaine has held the posts of Exams Officer, Professional Accreditation Officer, Programme Director, and Senior Tutor and has been an External Examiner for Liverpool University.

Jackie Alexander

Lay member of Appointments Board

Jackie is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and works as an independent Human Resources Consultant and trainer. Her most recent interim role is within the House of Commons Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme. Previous roles have included Recruitment Partner for PricewaterhouseCoopers and Managing Director Corporate Services for LCH.Clearnet.

Jackie also works within professional regulation and currently sits on the Investigation Committee for the ICAEW, Investigation panels for the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and the Professional Conduct Committee for the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. Previously she has served on the Appointments Board of the General Dental Council and served as a lay panellist for the Nursing and Midwifery Council on fitness to practice hearings.

Jackie is a non-practising solicitor and a magistrate and also sits on Schools Appeals and Exclusion panels for a London Borough.

Joy Julien

Joy Julien – Lay member of Appointments Board 

Joy is a chair of the Judicial Appointments Commission selection panels and a trustee of the London Legal Support Trust.

Previously, Joy was the chief executive of the Royal Courts of Justice Advice Bureau.  After leaving the legal advice sector, Joy developed a career in professional regulation, audit and assessment. Joy has worked predominantly with healthcare regulators including the Practitioner Performance Advice - NHS Resolution (formerly the National Clinical Assessment Service), the General Dental Council, the Nursing and Midwifery Council, and the Medical Practitioner's Tribunal (formerly the General Medical Council). 

Joy has cross-sector quasi judicial experience that includes sitting as an independent member of the Office of Judicial Complaints and the Parole Board.

Throughout her illustrious career within the not-for-profit legal advice sector, Joy has held various trustee positions which include the Central London Law Centre, the Legal Action Group and Protect (formerly Public Concern at Work).

Karimulla Akbar Khan

Mr Karimulla Akbar Khan is a qualified Barrister-at-law (England and Wales) and Attorney-at-Law (New York State). He is a graduate of the Universities of Cambridge and Reading. 

He currently serves as the UK Parliament House of Lords Commissioner for Standards and sits as a Legally Qualified Chairperson for several police regulatory panels. He is also the first Head of Judiciary for the International Rugby League (IRL) and is the most senior legal figure in the sport covering both the elite and grassroots game. He is also the statutory ‘Independent’ person for Surrey County Council and assists in promoting high standards of conduct by elected, appointed and co-opted Members of the County Council by impartially advising the Council when an allegation is made that involves a potential breach of the Member Code of Conduct. He is a non-executive member of the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) Appointment Committee responsible for making appointments to the FRC Tribunal Panel. In 2021, he was appointed by the Secretary of State for Education (DfE) as an Independent Assessor (a public appointment) in respect of complaints and appeals brought by students against the Student Loans Company

Akbar is a qualified workplace investigator for bullying, harassment, discrimination and other serious misconduct, and practised at the English Bar, including working overseas for the United Nations Organisation before serving in the UK Diplomatic Service between 2002-15 in several legal and policy roles, including as UK Head of International Law at the British Embassy, The Hague representing British legal interests before the United Nations International Courts and Tribunals. He was also UK Head of Delegation for counter-piracy off the Horn of Africa. He has extensive experience of the Commonwealth as a former Legal Director of the Commonwealth Secretariat and Secretary General of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. In 2012, he led the high-level international fact-finding investigation to the Republic of the Maldives to establish the circumstances behind an alleged political coup against President Nasheed that led to an international judicial inquiry. As Secretary General he had the privilege of being a Board Level Champion for ParliReach, a Workplace Equality Network established to increase awareness and appreciation of race, ethnicity and cultural heritage issues in the UK Parliament. 

Liz Blackburn

Elected to Council: 2017

Liz has a diverse range of asset management reporting and audit experience, as well as a passion for, and track record of, information gathering, sharing insights, building business relationships and helping businesses and individuals develop and succeed.

Her roles with blue chip financial services organisations (BlackRock, Royal Bank of Scotland, AEGON Asset Management, Standard Life Investments) and Big 4 accountants (PwC, EY) over the past 30 years have given her extensive experience of external audit, review and challenge, risk and control assessments, driving Risk Culture activities, Operational and ESE risk, and exposure to Board Risk Committees. 

Liz was admitted to membership of the ACCA in 2000 and became a Fellow in 2005.  She was elected to Council in November 2017.

Prior to joining Council Liz chaired the UK Financial Services and the Edinburgh & East of Scotland Member Network Panels and was awarded ACCA UK Advocate of the Year in 2016.

Liz now chairs the Accountants for Business Global Forum, a group of 25-30 CFOs from around the world which meets quarterly and discusses a wide range of topics from cyber security, finance transformation, future finance careers through to climate change and Covid-19 response.  Output from the Forum informs the Professional Insights (PI) research, and as such Liz has worked with the PI team and contributed to a number of PI reports.

Liz is an ex officio member of the ACCA Scotland Committee.

Read our interview with Liz.

Lucy Winskell

Lucy has been pro vice-chancellor (employability and partnerships) at Northumbria University since 2022, a full-time role where she has led the development of Northumbria’s relationships with local government and public bodies, shaping its contribution to regional economic, cultural and social development and graduate employment and establishing its Amsterdam campus as part of Northumbria’s Internationalisation Strategy. She steps down from that role at the end of August 2022, having been appointed Her Majesty’s lord lieutenant of Tyne and Wear, but will continue her non-executive roles.

Prior to joining Northumbria University in 2010, Lucy was a litigation lawyer for 28 years. During that time as a lawyer Lucy gained a very deep and rich experience of membership organisations and the regulation of professionals, sitting on the Council of the Law Society of England and Wales, on the board of the Solicitors Regulation Authority and President of Newcastle Law Society.

She has extensive non-executive director experience. Appointments have included Government Office North East, Darlington Building Society, the British Chambers of Commerce, the North East Industrial Development Board and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the last two being ministerial appointments.

Currently she is chair of the North East Local Enterprise Partnership and a non-executive director of North East Access to Finance.

Lucy has international experience as a former UK president of the Union Internationale des Advocats and served as UK chair of the British-American Project, the think-tank and international network for Anglo-US business and cultural relations.

She is chair of Live Theatre and a trustee of Live Theatre and International Centre for Life, both in Newcastle upon Tyne, and became chair of the Heritage Lottery Fund North East Committee in June 2017. She is deputy chair of The Community Foundation, Tyne and Wear and Northumberland.

Lucy was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday 2014 Honours List in recognition for her services to Higher Education and the regional economy in the North East. She was appointed as deputy lieutenant of Tyne and Wear in 2014, and subsequently lord lieutenant in May 2022 and was high sheriff of Tyne and Wear 2015/16.

Matthew Wong

Elected to Council: 2017

Matthew has more than 30 years of extensive experience in the accounting profession in Hong Kong and mainland China. He is a partner at PwC and the leader of PwC China’s financial services tax practice. He is also a trusted tax adviser to many Fortune 500 financial service companies, international hedge funds and private equity houses making investments into Asia and particularly China.

Matthew has served on the Steering Committee of ACCA Central China for more than a decade, since 2007. In 2016, he was elected as the Chairman of the Steering Committee and has represented ACCA Central China at the International Assembly.

He frequently contributes technical articles for AB Magazine, and provides insights for ACCA’s local development and events via the ACCA Central China expert panel.

Read our interview with Matthew.

Michael Guthrie

Michael Guthrie is an experienced executive leader with a background in professional regulation in the healthcare sector.

As Director of Policy and Standards for the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC), he was responsible for policy and standards development across 16 regulated health professions, leading work to bring further professions into statutory regulation. He also held an Executive leadership position with the Australian Dental Council (ADC), where he was responsible for the accreditation of programmes leading to registration in the dental professions.

He is currently Policy Lead in the Centre for Advancing Practice at Health Education England (HEE), a body with responsibility for the NHS workforce, and undertakes this role alongside freelance consultancy assignments for a variety of clients in the regulation, health and charity sectors.

He is a lay member of the Regulation Board of the Academy for Healthcare Science (AHCS), chairing its Operational Registration Committee and is a panel member of the British Psychoanalytic Council’s fitness to practise Screening Committee. He was previously a Board member of the NRCPD, a charity which holds a register of sign language interpreters and other communication professionals working with deaf and deaf blind people.

Nora Nanayakkara

Lay member of the Regulatory Board and Chair of the Appointments Board.

Nora holds a number of independent governance roles, including Chair of the Audit & Risk Committee and Non Executive Director on the Board of the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA), which oversees the production and regulation of the UK’s official statistics system.

Nora’s executive career in the private sector included several years of international experience and successfully launching a German digital tech start-up’s UK presence.  Having achieved an MBA, she then developed a portfolio of governance roles with her appointment as a Non Executive Director (NED) to the Board of Nominet, which runs a critical piece of the UK’s digital infrastructure; the .uk domain name register. She was subsequently appointed by Nominet as Senior Independent Trustee and Chair of the Audit Committee to the board of its corporate social investment foundation, Nominet Trust, which awarded multimillion pound funding to entrepreneurial organizations with innovative technology-enabled missions.  She has also served as a NED and Audit Committee member on the Board of the UK trading fund, The IPO, which is responsible for the UK’s intellectual property rights.

As well as her cross sectoral non-executive portfolio and governance roles, Nora brings valuable experience of professional regulation through her role as a lay fitness to practice Chair at the General Dental Council (GDC), as a lay panellist and Chair at the General Osteopathic Council (GOsC), an independent member of the Bar Council’s audit committee and the ACCA’s Regulation Board. Nora holds a Ministerial NED appointment in Ireland on the Board of the Digital Hub in Dublin, which provides incubator space and support to international tech start-ups. She is also a member of the Pay Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration (DDRB) and holds a Diploma in Legal Medicine (DLM).

Paul Layzell

Lay member of Qualifications Board

Professor Paul Layzell is currently principal and chief executive of Royal Holloway, University of London and deputy vice-chancellor of the University of London.  

After completing a degree in Econometrics and Accounting and higher degrees in Computer Science, Paul became an academic at UMIST in Manchester.  As a professor of software engineering and management, his academic work focused on the interaction between IT systems, organisations and people.  After leading an EU project on software maintenance, he worked with colleagues on a BT-funded project looking at the future of software and authored one of the early papers on software-as-a-service and cloud computing.

Between 2001 and 2004, Paul was programme manager for the merger of UMIST and the University of Manchester and after a brief spell as deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Sussex, he came principal at Royal Holloway in 2010.

During his career, Paul has maintained a close connection to education and assessment and for seven years was chair of AQA, the UK’s largest GCSE and A-level exam board.  He is a member of the World Academy of Sport Advisory Board and as education adviser, has assisted the development of professional qualifications for the sports management industry.

Paul has wide governance experience having been chair of Eduserv – an IT services company for the education and wider public sector, chair of London Higher – the representative body of London’s universities, a founding Board member of Jisc – an IT services company supporting further and higher education, and treasurer of Universities UK.

Paul is a keen gardener and in 2017 was appointed a deputy lieutenant of Surrey.

Paul Lewis

Lay member of the Qualifications Board.

Paul is the Chief Operating Officer of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a Royal Charter organisation supporting the work of the global chemical sciences community. 

Paul has substantial experience in the Education, Skills and STM publishing sectors including working at City & Guilds and, Cambridge Assessment. In these organisations, he oversaw the quality of provision and integrity of examinations across numerous teaching and examination centres around the world as well as developing new assessments and learning resources.

Paul has provided international education and training expertise to UK Government Ministers and led the team securing £1 billion of UK education exports whilst on secondment to DIT from PA Consulting. Earlier in his career, he was a Vice-Principal at a London FE college.

Professionally qualified with an BSc (Hons) degree, PGCE and MBA (Distinction), Paul is a graduate of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and a Fellow of the RSA and Institute of Leadership & Management.

Richard Cooper

Lay member of Regulatory Board and Chair of the Standards Board

Richard Cooper has extensive experience of leading business transformation and operating at board level within complex organisations.

He had worked with BT for more than 10 years, leading business transformation and engaging in face-to-face dealings with the UK telecoms regulator and other communication providers.

Since leaving BT (in March 2018) he has taken up roles including:

Member of the NHS Pay Review Body - The NHSPRB provides independent recommendations on the remuneration of all staff paid under Agenda for Change employed in the NHS. The NHSPRB’s recommendations apply to all staff in the NHS, with the exception of doctors, dentists and very senior managers. The remit group accounts for just under 1.5 million NHS staff (paybill c.£43bn).

Non-Executive Director and Audit Committee Chair, Health Research Authority - The HRA is an arm’s-length body in the Department of Health & Social Care that protects and promotes the interests of patients and the public in health and social care research.

Chair of West Suffolk Council Remuneration Panel - The Independent Remuneration Panel plays an important role in advising the Council on the remuneration and expenses of its Councillors.

Non-Executive Director at Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust (stood down February 2019).

Tom Spender

Tom Spender is currently the General Counsel for the Retail Bank of Lloyds Banking Group plc.

In his career, Tom has held senior positions at both regulated financial services firms and also at the UK financial services regulator. He has a legal background with over 20 years’ experience in consumer protection, litigation, risk management, the use of data and regulation.

Prior to joining, Lloyds Bank in 2016, Tom held various senior roles at the UK Financial Conduct Authority and its predecessors for over 13 years, including senior policy, enforcement and supervision roles.

Tom is a qualified solicitor and has worked in litigation and capital markets in international law firms in the UK and in Australia.